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I just finished illustrating Paula Deen's My First Cookbook. Here's a little piece that didn't make it into the book.

It's a Whimsical Life

“It’s time for the Friday Varcarel Jade Web Comic Update. Enjoy!”

“Okay Z-bot, I want to make sure we don’t lose Cici. If she lets out a yell, I want the Hana over there with weapons charged before the echo dies, understand?”

“Affirmative, Commander. The ship is on full autonomous combat readiness. Sensors, battle computer and perimeter defense systems are on maximum alert.”

“Acknowledged. Here’s our first update, folks. We have a new Varcarel Jade web comic page for you over on the comic side

“Alanna’s been gone a long time, Hikousen. . . I don’t know what I should do. She said to stay here but what if she’s in trouble?”

mrowrzzzzzzzz….

“Maybe I should transform and. . .”

“Hey! Who are you?”

“She is very much too young for Tree Shores High School.”

“You better not be that Sorcerer in disguise or I’ll ZAP YOU!”

“Whoa! I’m not a sorcerer. I promise. Calm down, now, okay? I’m just wondering what a little girl is doing in the band room at our high school?”

“With very strange-looking watch.”

“Yeah.”

“Jessie said I could go to the band room whenever I want. I’m supposed to wait here until Alanna gets back.”

“Jessie… Jessie… hmmm.. oh yeah! Isn’t that the dizzy blond girl that hangs around with Ranko?”

“I think last name is Hoshi. She is freshman in band with Ranko.”

“I don’t know where anybody is. Alanna said to wait but she’s been gone for a long time and I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t know what’s going on but this sounds bad.”

“I have to go find Acey. She’ll help me find them. Come on Hikousen.”

zzzzzzzz….

“Should she just leave like that?”

“We need to go to Ranko’s Mom’s Diner, or call somebody, because this is like, intense bad stuff going on.”

“We can use the shortcut to get to Diner. I have bike.”

“Me too. Let’s rock.”

“Cici!”

“Alanna! What’s wrong? My timepiece said something was enchanted, and. . .”

“Thank goodness I found you. Listen carefully to me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Something is terribly wrong. We went to look for Leila, Talitha and Shannon earlier today at Doubler’s. I thought they might have all gone there together for lunch. On the way there, Ranko and Jessica both vanished.”

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know. I can’t find them anywhere. I’ve got one more place to check. Ranko might have gone over to the athletics building to look for them. I need you to be ready to transform, because I have a bad feeling this has something to do with that Sorcerer.”

“I got my timepiece. Me and Hikousen will go with you!”

“No, Cici. We can’t take a chance that both of us will be attacked. I’ll be right back. Just stay here in the band room, okay?”

“Okay. . .”

“Errrr… Ranko called me and said there wasn’t anyone to do updates today, so uhhh… well, here we be. I’m Tara Blaylock and this is my pal Irina. Let’s see here I wrote down what Ranko
said. . .”

“It is comic book update, no?”

“Yeah, the Var-car-el Jade comic page was updated today. So yeah, go have a look or something.”

“We are not regular update people so please be kind if we make mistake.”

“I hope Ranko gets back soon.”

“This is our new web comic! It’s called LadyStar: The Varcarel Jade, and it’s a story about this really strange artifact we found one day after this super tough battle against some haunts at the Sports and Crafts Fair. It’s gonna be just like our Ajan Warriors Series Books, except it’s a seperate story, so it’s different than the books sorta, cause in the Varcarel Jade we all have our treasures and powers and stuff.”

“The Varcarel Jade will be updated every Tuesday and then again as part of our Ten Update Fridays. We might do some bonus updates too. We’ll announce everything here, and we’ve got a category set up for the web comic too.”

“So tell all your pals we’ve got a new web comic and invite them to join the adventure!”

“Yeah! It’s gonna be lots of fun! Ja!”

“Big barbed warhammer and plate armor can only mean one thing.”

“What.”

“Rock and roll!”

“heheeee….”

“We got a LadyStar champ too and his name is Michael!”

“Yep, aced it. Five for five.”

“Now Talitha-chan gots all the answers ’cause she’s the smartest girl in our whole school! Did you know that Talitha-chan has a computer that she programmed all by herself? She even showed me how to make unicorns my wallpaper on my computer time at school!”

“She’s programmer girl.”

“Hi Jessica. Hi Ranko.”

“Okay what were all the answers so we can make our quiz all official and stuff?”

“Okay for question one, wildflowers grow alongside the walkway at your house.”

“Right! My mom loves her wildflowers.”

“Question Two, Cici found the Chronicler’s Lantern in Collins Park near the topiary and statues of forest animals. The closest statue was a deer.”

“Good thing Little Bit found that lantern or the Ajan Warriors would have been sunk pretty quick.”

“I know the third one! Our band room is number 74! I know that ’cause I almost got lost on the first day and Dr. Strings helped me find it. He’s a nice man. I want to take science classes where he’s the teacher ’cause he knows lots of stuff about science.”

“Question Four, we found the Goldenwood Shield in the Venom Deeps in talisman form.”

“Then the Professor got the POWA and zap zap zappity! The baddies were toast.”

*giggle*

“Question Five, The LadyStar fought the Vulture Crest at a place called Kulnas Forge.”

“Yeah, that dream was super scary too.”

“There you have it folks. We’re going to do quizzes for all of our Ten Update days, so if you missed this one, study up, read all the chapters and you’ll be ready for the next one. Maybe you can be a LadyStar champ!”

“Yeah! Ja ne minna-san!”

“Oh, and don’t forget to VOTE! Over there on the left side of all pages at the top. Only takes a second. We’d like to hear what you think!”

“Cici’s got an announcement? No way!”

“Yeah! We’re gonna have two events in one month! It’s gonna be just like April and when we had all our friends come with us to the site! This month is gonna be even better than that!”

“Even better than that?! Well, let’s see what the big announcements are then!”

*giggle*

“We’re gonna have a web comic and it starts this month!”

“Errr….”

“That’s.. like a really big… announcement, huh?”

“Sugoi…”

“Yeah! And we’re gonna have a big contest for Halloween like we did when we had the Spooky Swifty River contest too!”

“Uhhh.. conference? Please?”

“We’ll, uhh.. we’ll be back later. I hope.”

“Sugoi…”

“Yay, a quiz! I love quizzes!”

“Okay, the rules are pretty simple. We’re going to put up five questions, and if you want to answer, you just add a comment on this article. We’ll put up the answers on Monday of next week, so you’ve got the weekend to study.”

“All the answers are in our books, so if you read up and you’re a good studier like me, you’ll know the answers!”

“Okay, Alanna-sama asks the first question.”

“Question Number One: What kind of flowers grow alongside the walkway in front of Jessica’s house?”

“Ooh, good question.”

“Cici gots the second question.”

“Yeah! Okay Question Number Two: Where was I when I first found the Chronicler’s Lantern and what was nearby?”

“Talitha-chan gets question number three.”

“Question Number Three: What is the room number of the Tree Shores High School Band Room?”

“Ranko-chan gets question number four.”

“Question Number Four: What treasure did we get from the big demon monsters in Palace in the Sky?”

“And I get Question Number Five: In the Legend of the LadyStar, where did the battle against the Vulture Crest take place?”

“There you go folks. If you get all five right, you’re a certified LadyStar champ! Don’t forget to vote!”

And it shall come to pass
that a gentle voice shall be heard
in the Golden Wood

Telling tales of wonder
and guarded by the Living Forest

“Let’s hear it for the PROFESSOR!”

“Woohoo!”

“It’s Talitha-chan! And she’s got some of the bestest powers of all. Her treasure is the Goldenwood Shield, which is the only treasure that we got that’s actually alive just like a real tree!”

“In Palace in the Sky, Hayashi fought that demon in the Venom Deeps that was casting fire spells at us.”

“But the Warrior of the Forest can call on plants and trees to fight for her and she zapped those baddies for us. Tough fight.”

“I think she’s going to get some new powers in Call of the Huntress too, and one of them is called ‘Autumn Canopy.’”

“Ooh, that’s a pretty name. I wonder what it does?”

“So go check out Forest Girl’s page and get all attuned with flowers and gardens and all that good stuff. Say a few words, Professor.”

“She’s real shy and stuff, but Talitha-chan is our best friend and we’re glad she’s a warrior just like us! Ja ne minna-san!”

“I think there’s lots of people who come to our site and want to learn all about LadyStar but they get confused ’cause we have so much stuff going on!”

“I know I get confused and I’ve been here for a while now.”

zzzzzzz….

“Do you realize Hikousen’s been asleep for six years?”

“Heheee.. he’s our guard kitty.”

“Okay, do the update. You guys always run off on these crazy tangents and we never get the update done.”

“Okay Alanna-sama. We’re gonna tell you all about a page that new people might not know about ’cause it’s a click that Talitha-chan put in the site instead of in our menu which we don’t have any more.”

“And if you understood that, you are WAY more mentally focused than me, because my brain just turned into mashed potatoes.”

“See, looky! This is one of our buttons, and it’s on all of our articles no matter where they are on our whole site. It’s the red heart button with our logo and it’s called the Crimson Thunder Heart logo. This is what it looks like:”

“Clicking that button will always take you to our What is LadyStar? page, which will give you a good introduction to our site and our story.”

“If you look on the left column under the poll question we got right now…”

“don’t forget to VOTE!”

“Yeah! Anyway, there’s four book covers in the left side column. Those are all of our books, and when you click on them you get to read them for free right here on our site. We did that ’cause we want everyone to read our stories and join in all our neat adventures!”

“So if you’re new to our site, welcome to LadyStar and be sure to read the What is LadyStar? page. Then you can jump right in to our stories. We just got through updating the Call of the Huntress Preview Page (which is my book *happy dance*), with all six of our current previews of the third book in our series. The first two books are complete and published and you can read them all for free.”

“See you all in the story, folks. Ten Update Friday continues! Don’t miss out!”

“Updated the Winterdancer Page too.”

“Awesome. I love that chapter with the bang, pow, zap. I can’t wait until we get our powers. We’re going to have some great battles.”

“Yeah, we had a bit of a disagreement. If you like combat action, you’ll probably like this preview called Valor of the Winterdancer.”

“Alanna-sama’s the Winterdancer, ’cause that’s her title of lore when she gets all her neat powers. Did you know the Warrior of the River’s powers are all from snow and ice? It even says so on her warrior page! Looky!”

The Ajan Warrior of the River

“Konnichi-wa minna-san! Did you know that Alanna-sama has lots and lots of banners that you can put on your web site to link to us? They’re even better than my super-neat favorite chocolate number button! Looky at what she got already!”

“We have banners for each of our books too, so if you want to link to your favorite story you can do that as well. Visit my LadyStar Link Exchange page for all the details. If you link to us we might be able to add your site to our Fun Places to Visit list! Thanks everyone!”

“You know, one thing a lot of new people might not know about our site is we are publishing our whole story for free so anyone can read it.”

“Yeah, we got two whole novels published already. One is called The Dreamspeaker, which is the story of when we found the first five Ajan Treasures. We also got The Palace in the Sky which is a story about when we went to a place called the Venom Deeps and battled lots of scary monsters.”

“Both of those books are already complete, and we have parts of two more books published. One is called Call of the Huntress which is going to be published next, and the fourth book is called Winterdancer. Both of those books will be published free just like the first two really soon.”

“So come back and visit us and be sure to read our books, ’cause we have lots of neat adventures. Ja ne minna!”

“Hey everyone. We’ve had quite a few updates for the third book in our series, Call of the Huntress, so I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of what we’ve previewed so far.”

“That’s a great idea Shannon-sama!”

“Thanks, Hoshi! Okay, our first preview was By the Light of the Stars which is the story of the Warrior of the Night battling reptile-like monsters called Carcs.”

“Yucky. I don’t like monsters.”

“The second update was a four-part series called the Plot Against the Vicereine, about a noble in Aventar who gets attacked by evil assassins. Here’s Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.”

“The Vicereine seems like she’s real strong. I hope we don’t have to fight her.”

“Yeah, but she gave that little boy a silver coin even though the price of the flower was a lot less. I think that was really nice.”

“Yeah! That was nice, huh? I wonder what a cruss ring is though.”

“So how come you decided to do a preview roundup today?”

“Guess.”

“Ooh! You’re gonna have another preview?! Realeeeee?”

“Check back later today everyone! A brand new exclusive preview from Book Three of our series Call of the Huntress, right here. See ya then!”

“Don’t miss the new preview! Ja minna!”